Models and Methods Commons^™

Military Service And Offending Behaviors Of Emerging Adults: A Conceptual Review, Christopher Salvatore, Travis Taniguchi

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Focusing on the United States, this paper examines the impact of military service for the cohort of individuals that have experienced the social factors that characterize emerging adulthood as a unique stage in the life course. We argue that military service, as a turning point, may act differently in contemporary times compared to findings from past research. This difference is driven by changes in military service, the draft versus volunteer military service, and the prevalence of emerging adulthood. As a background, we describe emerging adulthood, examine how emerging adulthood relates to crime and deviance, explore the impact of military life …

Advocating For The Law Of Subsidiarity, Braeden T. Fleck

Liberty University Journal of Statesmanship & Public Policy

Today in our nation, a steady rate of increased centralization has contributed to a society that seems fixated on the prospect of personal gain. This has had a direct adverse impact on our nation’s economic growth and efficiency, and has dampened our sense of duty as citizens who are gifted with a government administration that acknowledges constitutional rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The inefficient results of federal government’s political action highlight the ineffectiveness of current procedure. The question then arises, does the principle of subsidiarity when applied to government provide measurable gain for the parties …

Super Pacs And Agenda Setting, Logan Bush

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Several Supreme Court rulings, starting with Buckley v. Valeo and culminating with Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, have created two unequal campaign finance systems: One where party and candidate committees must follow strict fundraising regulations from the Federal Election Commission, and another populated with Super PACs and similar organizations which are allowed to take in unlimited donations. This paper sets out to see if Super PACs, which are freer to operate under the law, have challenged the party and candidate committees’ agenda-setting ability in an election.

Chaos From Order: A Network Analysis Of In-Fighting Before And After El Chapo's Arrest, Darren Colby

Independent Student Projects and Publications

The effect of leadership decapitation—the capture or killing of the leader of an armed group—on future violence has been studied with competing conclusions. In Mexico, leadership decapitation has been found to increase violence and in-fighting among drug cartels. However, the causal pathways between leadership decapitation and in-fighting are unclear. In this article, it is hypothesized that leadership decapitation will weaken alliances between armed actors, lead to greater preferential attachment in networks of cartels and militias, and result in greater transitive closure as cartels seek to expand their power. These hypotheses are tested with a stochastic actor oriented model on a …

Investing Into Domestic Manufacturing Of Critical Medication And Vaccines For The Federal Government, Sharon Low

All Reports

While the federal government has made numerous public announcements regarding their stimulus plan and promises to increase the domestic capacity to produce personal protective equipment, vaccines, and medical equipment, a critical aspect that has been neglected is the serious and ongoing shortages of critical medication. The government has promised to provide 4.28 billion to expand testing and contact tracing capacities, 7.5 billion towards PPE, and 500 million to the provinces and territories for “critical health care system needs and support for mitigation effects.” While these efforts as part of Trudeau’s Safe Restart Agreement are a good place to begin reducing …

Impact Of Covid-19 On The Italian And American Healthcare Systems : A Comparative Assessment, Bita Pejam, Jennifer Lam

All Reports

This report aims to examine and assess the impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic on the healthcare systems of the United States of America and Italy; two of the most heavily affected nations. Using data from December 2019 to January 2021, several consultations, and policy reviews, we identify risks and notable areas of issue in each nations’ approach to combating the virus. We focus our report particularly on the health policies and the governmental structures in place that contributed to each nations’ initial method of alleviating the impact of COVID-19. Our report compares the two healthcare systems and proposes a …

Voter Rationality In The United States, Asael Marvel

Honors Program Theses

The decade preceding 2020 has brought into question the political rationality of the average American voter, as it seems many individuals may vote against what is best for themselves. This begs a simple question, are American voters voting in their won rational self-interest, this project looks into a myriad of theories on voter rationality and the processes behind how voters may calculate or come to their voter decisions in an election in order to answer these questions. Then using the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey creates a method to analyze whether a specific group within the US is voting rationally, …

Neither “Post-War” Nor Post-Pregnancy Paranoia: How America’S War On Drugs Continues To Perpetuate Disparate Incarceration Outcomes For Pregnant, Substance-Involved Offenders, Becca S. Zimmerman

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the unique interactions between pregnancy, substance involvement, and race as they relate to the War on Drugs and the hyper-incarceration of women. Using ordinary least square regression analyses and data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, I examine if (and how) pregnancy status, drug use, race, and their interactions influence two length of incarceration outcomes: sentence length and amount of time spent in jail between arrest and imprisonment. The results collectively indicate that pregnancy decreases length of incarceration outcomes for those offenders who are not substance-involved but not evenhandedly -- benefitting white …

‘It’S Like Baking A Cake’: An Analysis Of Conscience Voting In The New Zealand House Of Representatives Since The Introduction Of The Mixed-Member Proportional System In 1996, Harrison Hosking

CMC Senior Theses

Conscience voting in the New Zealand House of Representatives offers a unique opportunity to assess Sam Peltzman’s ‘Principal-Agent Theory’ as outlined in his 1984 paper, Constituent Interest and Congressional Voting.

This thesis begins with a brief assessment of the principal-agent model (and other literature regarding parliamentary representation) before looking at the New Zealand Parliamentary system and the phenomenon of private member’s bills and how they aid the legislative process. This is followed by an exploration of a constructed dataset of conscience votes that have occurred since the inception of the mixed-member proportional (MMP) electoral system in 1996. An analysis …

Noise: A Flaw In Human Judgment. [Book Review], Michael Cohen

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Military Influence On Middle Eastern Democratization Following The Arab Spring, Andrew Fleming

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Despite experiencing countless wars, sectarian extremism, imperialism, and authoritarian rule, very few events have impacted the Middle East more significantly than the Arab Spring. Starting in 2010, the Arab Spring marked a turning point in which the people of numerous Arabic states collectively gathered to protest and combat the oppressive regimes that had controlled the region for decades. The Spring was indicative of the strong, recurring ambitions for revolution and regime change across the Middle East, presenting the Arab nations with an opportunity to reform their states from within. For some Middle Eastern states, the Arab Spring served as a …

Democracy In The Mena, Alexandria Petrof

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

There is not sufficient evidence that the Middle East will be able to democratize effectively. First and foremost, most attempts of implementing democracy have failed. The landscape and lack of industrialization also plays a role in the inability to apply democratic systems into this area. Lastly, the educational system, or lack thereof, struggles to educate their children and citizens as a whole and education is one of the biggest factors in the success of democracy.

Don't Change The Subject: How State Election Laws Can Nullify Ballot Questions, Cole Gordner

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Procedural election laws regulate the conduct of state elections and provide for greater transparency and fairness in statewide ballots. These laws ensure that the public votes separately on incongruous bills and protects the electorate from uncertainties contained in omnibus packages. As demonstrated by a slew of recent court cases, however, interest groups that are opposed to the objective of a ballot question are utilizing these election laws with greater frequency either to prevent a state electorate from voting on an initiative or to overturn a ballot question that was already decided in the initiative’s favor. This practice is subverting the …

The Effects Of Racial Capitalism On Poor White Laborers, Amy Whittaker

Liberal Studies (MA) Final Essays

While always remembering that racial capitalism’s very nature ensures that non-white Americans suffer incomparable racial oppression, this paper will endeavor to expose the devastation caused to American society as a whole by explaining the ways in which racial capitalism destroyed poor white labors ability to participate fully in the economic system and strangled its chances of living the American dream. It is my hope that by discussing the missing piece of the poor white laborers’ experience under racial capitalism will unite poor white laborers and poor black laborers to work together to end racial capitalism, policing, and the carceral system. …

Scottish Marine Renewable Energy: U.S. Approaches For Development Of Wave And Tidal Technologies, Stella Kathryn Fairall

Honors Theses and Capstones

Marine renewable energy, energy harnessed from various ocean resources such as waves, tides, currents, thermal gradients, and marine streams, has incredible potential in the United States. Several European countries have realized the potential of the resource in the North Sea and Atlantic and have created incredibly successful industries already. The United Kingdom, particularly Scotland, is the world leader because of the comprehensive policy, labor force, and markets it has established in order to make MRE a competitive energy source. In the United States, the industry is immature, underfunded, and lacks policy support. In order to establish itself as a world …

A Global Ecological Classification Of Coastal Segment Units To Complement Marine Biodiversity Observation Network Assessments, Roger Sayre, Kevin Butler, Keith Van Graafeiland, Sean Breyer, Dawn Wright, Charlie Frye, Deniz Karagulle, Madeline Martin, Jill Cress, Tom Allen, Rebecca J. Allee, Rost Parsons, Bjorn Nyberg, Mark J. Costello, Peter Harris, Frank E. Muller-Karger

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

A new data layer provides Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) labels for global coastal segments at 1 km or shorter resolution. These characteristics are summarized for six US Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) sites and one MBON Pole to Pole of the Americas site in Argentina. The global coastlines CMECS classifications were produced from a partitioning of a 30 m Landsat-derived shoreline vector that was segmented into 4 million 1 km or shorter segments. Each segment was attributed with values from 10 variables that represent the ecological settings in which the coastline occurs, including properties of the adjacent …

The Role Of Opposition In A Democracy: A Bibliometric Analysis, Abhinav Shrivastava Mr., Richa Dwivedi Ms.

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Globally, democracy is under threat with the prevalence of authoritarian regime all over the world and the role of opposition in a democracy is an under studied subject and has not received adequate importance by researchers all over the world. The present study focuses on the bibliometrics analysis of the role of opposition in democratic system in order to understand the research status of the subject globally using SCOPUS and Web of Science databases.

The analysis shows that research has been undertaken by various organisations and researchers however, the present time demands more attention on the role of opposition so …

Text As Data: An Overview, Kenneth Benoit

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

When it comes to textual data, the fields of political science and international relations face a genuine embarrassment of riches. Never before has so much text been so readily available on such a wide variety of topics that concern our discipline. Legislative debates, party manifestos, committee transcripts, candidate and other political speeches, lobbying documents, court opinions, laws – not only are all recorded and published today, but in many cases this is in a readily available form that is easily converted into structured data for systematic analysis.

Measuring ‘Closeness’ In 3-Candidate Elections: Methodology And An Application To Strategic Voting, Daniel Kselman, Emerson Niou, Austin Horng-En Wang

Political Science Faculty Research

Past research suggests that voter behavior is influenced by perceptions of electoral competitiveness. For example, when an election is perceived to be close, voters will be more likely to turnout and/or cast strategic votes for their second-most preferred candidate. Operationalizing electoral competitiveness in three-candidate elections presents previously unrecognized methodological challenges. This paper first shows that many past strategies for measuring ‘closeness’ in three-candidate contests have violated at least one of three basic properties that any such measure should satisfy. We then propose a new measurement grounded in probability ratios, and prove formally that ratio-indices satisfy these axiomatic criteria. Empirical analyses …

The Political Economy Of Vermont’S Abortion Bill, Shishir Shakya, Elham Erfanian, Alexandre R. Scarcioffolo

Regional Research Institute Working Papers

Public choice literature divides the rationality of voting between instrumental and expressive. In this paper, we take the Vermont legislature in passing the H. 57 bill as a case to explain some of the determinants of expressive voting empirically. The H.57 bill declares that no government entity can interfere with, or restrict, a consenting individual’s right to abortion care across the entire gestation period. However, the bill has not changed the previously states quo of the state towards abortion rights. Thus, it creates a situation in which we can analyze the legislator’s voting behavior through the lens of expressive voting …